(ANSA-AP) - BUCHAREST, MAY 31 - Pope Francis arrived in Romania on Friday for a three-day, cross-country pilgrimage that in many ways is completing the 1999 trip by St. John Paul II that marked the first-ever papal visit to a majority Orthodox country. President Klaus Iohannis met Francis at the airport and the two huddled for a private meeting before Francis opened a series of meetings with Romania's political and religious leadership. Francis' visit comes on the heels of the European Parliament elections that hollowed out the political middle in the bloc, and Francis is expected to speak about issues confronting the continent during the trip. Key moments are Francis' Mass for the largely Hungarian-speaking Roman Catholic faithful at the country's most famous Marian shrine, Sumuleu Ciuc, in eastern Transylvania. He will also beatify seven Greek-Catholic bishops who were martyred during communist rule, when Catholics were brutally persecuted.

Francis will also meet with the patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the latest of his foreign trips to poor countries where Catholics are a minority. In Romania, they are a divided minority between two Catholic rites, Roman Catholic and Greek-Catholic. "I'm coming to you to walk together," Francis said in a videomessage released on the eve of his trip. The visit Friday includes a meeting with Prime Minister Prime Minister Viorica Dancila, whose Social Democratic Party, or PSD, was soundly defeated during the European Parliament elections. (ANSA-AP).